The action, though choreographed by a long-time Li collaborator, has an ugly, sadistic edge that never appears in Li's Hong Kong films.
Kiss of the Dragon (2001)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:101
Fresh:51
Rotten:50
Average Rating:5.2/10
Consensus: A formulaic actioner that's sure to please action fans. Those looking for plot, believability, or character development will have difficulty finding them.
Runtime: 1 hr 40 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Synopsis: The writers of THE FIFTH ELEMENT, Luc Besson (who also directed the Bruce Willis film) and Robert Mark Kamen, have teamed up again to deliver Jet Li in the action thriller KISS OF THE DRAGON. Li... The writers of THE FIFTH ELEMENT, Luc Besson (who also directed the Bruce Willis film) and Robert Mark Kamen, have teamed up again to deliver Jet Li in the action thriller KISS OF THE DRAGON. Li stars as Liu Jiuan, a Chinese agent so dedicated to his job that he has no friends, no family, no dreams. He is sent to Paris to help the French police capture a Chinese gangster, but France's top cop, Jeanne-Pierre Richard (Tcheky Karyo), has set Liu up to take the fall for a brutal killing he himself carried out. On the run in a strange city, Liu keeps a low profile until he unwillingly becomes friends with an American hooker, Jessica (Bridget Fonda)--who just happens to hold the key to his innocence. But Richard is always one step ahead of them--he has Jessica's daughter. Li and Fonda make a great team; their relationship is at the core of the film, as neither character has ever been able to put his complete trust in another person before. The action scenes, directed by Corey Yuen, are fast and furious and very violent, featuring mesmerizing moves by Li, especially one involving a billiard ball. Chris Nahon, in his directorial debut, makes excellent use of the location, including numerous shots of famous Parisian landmarks as the bad cops try to machine-gun down Liu in the streets and sewers and on the Seine. [More]
Starring: Jet Li, Bridget Fonda, Tcheky Karyo, Burt Kwouk
Starring: Jet Li, Bridget Fonda, Tcheky Karyo, Burt Kwouk, Max Ryan
Director: Chris Nahon
Director: Chris Nahon
Screenwriter: Luc Besson, Robert Mark Kamen
Producer: Luc Besson, Steven Chasman, Happy Walters
Composer: Craig Armstrong
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Reviews for Kiss of the Dragon
Seeing this movie won't get you into MIT, but it's passable fun and all wrapped up in 95 minutes -- a mere smooch compared to a lot of movies these days.
Kiss of the Dragon will probably please hard-core action fans who have become inured to plot idiocies, but it remains a terrible waste of talent.
Kiss of the Dragon has little of the balletic grace of better martial-arts flicks and none of the thoughtful restraint of these forms of combat.
If you dig this kind of movie, you're gonna love it. It's smartly edited, with sometimes breathtaking carnage.
Overproduced action movies aimed at the lowest common denominator simply cannot get any more trite or insultingly hackneyed than Kiss of the Dragon.
Kiss Of The Dragon, like its title, combines the seductive and ferocious. Not to mention playing out like a chiropractor's wet dream
[Fonda's] histrionic little-girl-lost performance is downright Jovovichian -- and as in Romeo Must Die, the leads barely touch.
Jet Li is always a pleasure to watch, even in this silly story about a Chinese spy befriended by an American prostitute on a mission in Paris.
An ephemeral exhibition of mindless action that you'll probably have forgotten even before the final credits have ceased to roll.
Not even the arch-villain gets to say anything resembling the kind of wit that we expect of bad guys.
Where fools cheered the recycled explosions of Swordfish and the vapidity of Pearl Harbor, Kiss of the Dragon delivers the goods.
Don't go expecting the same tired wire-fu we've had jammed down our throats over and over in the past few years. This isn't like that. It's more about the contact, the skin-on-skin fights that even leave bruises on the people in the back of the theater.
Latest News for Kiss of the Dragon
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June 14, 2001:
The style of action in KOD was heavily influenced by comments made during series of messages posted by fans on the Jet Li website forum, immediately after the release of Romeo Must Die in United States. ![]()
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